Competition Analysis : Quick vs. McDonalds

I’m hungry! What is the nearest burger restaurant? We think that is an important question for fast food restaurants to consider. Their customers want food fast. They’ll likely go to the nearest place.

But, how do I know for which customers my restaurant is closer? And, which location should I pick for my new restaurant? These kind of questions are the topic of this article. We take the two main burger restaurants in Belgium as an example: Quick and McDonalds.

We have created a map that provides the necessary insights to answer the questions stated above. For each Quick and McDonalds, the map shows a 10-minute drivetime zone. This means that for each colored area on the map, you can reach a Quick or McDonalds restaurant within a 10-minute drive.

The map colors indicate which restaurant is closer. Green means Quick is closer, red means McDonalds is closer. Colorless areas indicate that both Quick and McDonalds are out of range.

How can we use this map?

First of all, this map shows a difference in strategy between Quick and McDonalds. While Quick has more presence in large city centers, McDonalds also focusses on rural areas where they have no direct competition.

This map is an ideal companion for location planning. Suppose Quick wants to open a new restaurant. Using this map, they immediately see the influence of the competition. Colorless areas seem ideal locations since there is no competition. However, you do want a fair amount of your target audience living there. We’ll add that data to the map in a future post.

Both offer to replace fries with a salad if you want, pretty healthy then I’d say

Drive time zones are calculated by following each road from the starting point until a given maximum is reached. Each node within the zone gets the minimum drive time value to reach it and the areas around those nodes are then filled with an appropriate color.

Technically, we can change the routing configuration based on where you start from (rural/city). I can imagine two kinds of situations happening:
- Your target is within a city: The drive time zone outline stays the same since people coming from the surrounding area’s will come by car.
- The target is nearby a city: The zone will show a dent where the city is since people will use slower means of transport.

Mind that the fill color within a drive time zone cannot be determined that easily when mixing modes of transport. If you can reach a certain spot by car in 5min (green) but on foot in 10min (red), how can we color it?